After the INR10,000 crore Startup India fund launched last year, only INR5.66 crore is invested so far

The Government of India launched a futuristic Startup India initiative with much fanfare in 2015, however, as against the promised disbursement of INR10,000 crore, only INR5.66 crore have been invested. The initiative promised to promote and support the startup industry in the country, and the corpus fund was a major part of that announcement.

According to the program, a INR10,000-crore “Fund of Funds of Startups” was set up and the SIDBI bank was made the fund manager. These funds were to be invested in the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s registered alternative investment funds, which would go to startups. However, SIDBI said it had created a corpus of only INR1,315 crore for four private investment funds, and of the INR1,315-crore corpus, only INR110 crore has been committed to four companies – Kae Capital, Orios Venture Partners Fund-II, Kitven Fund-III and Saha Trust. Ironically, Kae Capital is the only venture that has actually invested in a start-up so far. After a commitment of INR45 crore was made by the SIDBI, it invested INR5.66 crore in a new venture.

It will be interesting to see how the initiative helps the startup infrastructure with such minimal disbursements even after 2 year of inauguration.